Turns about Town

by Robert Cortes Holliday

This fellow is a sort of author. He had served a time or two as a juror in the Supreme Court of New York County. In that building down by the City Hall. But he says those cases bored him terribly. They were chicken-feed sort of rows, generally concerned with the question of how many dollars and fractions thereof X had occasioned the loss of to Z by reason of his failure to deliver such and such a quantity of (say) beeswax before the drop in the market of 39.7¼ cents, as called for by telephone agreement, possibly. The "Court" (a nice, pink and grey old fellow) would go to sleep, with his mouth open, during the drone of the legal argument, and be awakened automatically (apparently by some change in atmospheric conditions) at the moment required for him to begin his charge to the jury. Occasionally, he would come semi-to for an instant before this, and indistinctly utter the words, "Objection sustained."

My friend's chief impression of these proceedings is his recollection of one phenomenon which he observed. Not long after the opening of the presentation of X's side of the case he saw very clearly that Z hadn't a leg to stand on. It was ridiculous that he had the face to come into court with an attempt to question the truth of facts which were as apparent to the naked eye as the Woolworth Building. My friend felt it needless to pay any further attention to the foolish formalities of the argument. If he had not had an uneasy feeling that he might get pinched for this, he would have gone to sleep, like the Judge.

But those were dull days in the jury business.

A little later my friend gets some sort of a ticket instructing him to call and talk things over with a gentleman having the university degree of Commissioner of Jurors. This gentleman asks my friend if he has ever been arrested on a criminal charge, if he is opposed to capital punishment, and if he has any prejudice against Episcopalians. My friend is a man of liberal mind, and replies that he would just as soon hang an Episcopalian as anybody else. "You're on," said the gentleman, reaching for a blotter; and signed him up. My friend didn't know exactly for what. But the gentleman said everything was all right, they might not call on my friend for a long time, and then perhaps it would be a short case.

Sometime back was all this. My friend had almost forgotten about his acquaintance with the Commissioner. Then all of a sudden the gong sounds and the great Crime Wave is on. Detectives dash madly about with shotguns. A jeweller is shot every day after lunch and a subway ticket-seller is robbed directly after every train starts. My friend hurries home early because everybody is fined who is caught on any paved street after dark, and there in his letter-box is the summons from his old friend the Commissioner, who apparently has borne him in mind all this while.

On the document is printed by a printing-press, "Jack Hammond vs. The People of the State of New York." And on it is written with a pen my friend's name, before the printed words "Special Juror." It very urgently invites my friend to appear at ten o'clock four days distant at the Criminal Courts Building and there "await further order of the Court."

You get off the subway at Brooklyn Bridge, you know, and go, past the Municipal Building, up Centre Street. A district around behind the "lanes" (as they say of steamship travel) of general traffic, and one infrequently traversed by my friend. He was much interested in the spectacle hereabout. Buildings labelled Public Health on this hand, buildings labelled Public Records on that. Then you come to that prison as gruesome in its name as the Tower of London is romantic in its connotation—the Tombs. The structure itself, a cluster of rather slender wings, rises from behind its dark walls with an element of grace, in contrast to that chill, squat, mouldering pile which begot and bequeathed the historic name. Ugh! though, those barred windows, row upon row, give a fellow such qualms as do the ugly symbols of our mortality. Even though you ain't done nothin', make you feel sorta faint like inside!

There in the south wall is a little door, like a rabbit burrow, with a little group about it, and quite a small bustle going on. Standing in this bit of a doorway, as though she had something to do in the way of belonging there, is a queer, oval body who looks much as though she might be what is called an "apple woman." Marked "Visitors' Entrance," this door. What is it all the people on this side of the street are pausing to look at over there?

A cab is drawn up. From this lightly steps (or flashes) a dizzy dream. "Floppy" hat, scant skirt awhirl, pink-hued stockings gleaming to the height of the full curve behind the knee, tall satin pump-heels dancing the wearer on her toes—she swirls through the dark doorway. "They all have their wimmin," remarks a blousy-looking loiterer to my friend.

At the north, three stories up, the prison connects with the courts building by that fabled structure the "bridge of sighs."